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Practical WordPress Tip #19 Link to other comments

January 28, 2010 By

(Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes)

Benefit: Deep linking helps improve search engine results and provides more context for reader interaction.

Problem: Creating long narrative structures delimited by time intervals with variable length requires support from multiple sources, including comments and discussion from readers at any previous point in time.

Practical WordPress Tip: Link directly to comments.

Here’s how: Once you understand the concept, it’s easy. Support your link to a comment with contextually relevant anchors as you would any other link. The key is finding a permalink to the comment you want to link to:

  • Some WordPress themes do not provide a permalink to individual comments. In this case, it’s moot. You will have to link to the page, and provide instructions for the reader to find the comment.
  • Themes that do provide a permalink to individual comments do so in different ways. For example, in Thesis theme, the permalink may be associated with the comment number in the upper right corner of the comment. Other themes implement comment permalinks differently.

Why: I’ve never seen anyone discuss linking directly to comments. I have seen it done elsewhere, but only on blogs or websites with relatively sophisticated authors having many years of experience with hypertext.

Note: once you are using this (and similar linking techniques), your ability to exploit hypertext will improve markedly. Most bloggers will never take the time to master hypertext, and it does take time.

Previous Practical WordPress Tip: Practical WordPress Tip #18: Deep link to internal anchors. Deep linking adds blog value by exposing more content to both readers and search engines. Learn a little used technique to expand deep linking opportunities.

Next Practical WordPress Tip: Stay tuned…

Do you have a Tip? Would you like to write a Practical WordPress Tip? Each Tip is very short, and focuses on a single action that anyone can use right away, no programming required! If you have a Tip that fits into this series, and you’d like to publish it here on Website In A Weekend, send it on!

Filed Under: Creating Content Tagged With:

Practical WordPress Tip #18: Deep link to internal anchors

November 19, 2009 By

(Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes)

Benefit: Internal linking helps you build a tightly integrated website, more favored by search engines.

Problem: Creating highly relevant and tightly targeted internal links is time consuming, and requires a considerable amount of either planning, imagination or both.

Practical WordPress Tip: Use the anchor element <a> to select link targets internally on web pages.

This is technically easy. Here’s how:
(tip)

  1. Choose a relevant section of text within a blog post, preferably when you’re writing the post.
  2. Add an anchor element immediately before the section you want to link to in the future. Like this: <a name="mylinkname"></a>. You can also highlight the anchor text, like so: <a name="otherlinkname">anchor text here</a>.
  3. Use a hashmark # to refer back to this section from anywhere on the Web. For example, adding “#tip” to the end of the URL for this Practical WordPress Tip (http://website-in-a-weekend.net/creating-content/practical-wordpress-tip-18-deep-link-internal-anchors/#tip) let’s you jump directly to the beginning of this list.
  4. Same page linking can be achieved very easily, for example <a href="#tip">jump to tip</a>
    Hat tip Hat tip : Hat tip to Kelly Diels for
    suggesting this on-page example. Thanks Kelly!
  5. Bonus: WordPress allows to you to link directly to a specific comment. For Thesis theme, look for the small number in the upper right corner of the comment.

Why: Back in olden days, which is to say in the 1990s, tables of contents for web pages had to be constructed by hand using the anchor element to link within web pages. Nowadays, with content engines such as WordPress, very few authors link within web pages. Using this technique regularly gives you a competitive advantage.

Previous Practical WordPress Tip: Practical WordPress Tip #17: Use the tail of your Drafts queue for “notes”. Using WordPress for content management requires smart thinking. Here’s a way to keep track of your raw material, without getting in your way. You save time.

Next Practical WordPress Tip: Practical WordPress Tip #19 Link to other comments. Read how to link directly to comments to increase SERPs and support narrative threads in your blog posts. It’s easy and increases your clout as an author.

Do you have a Tip? Would you like to write a Practical WordPress Tip? Each Tip is very short, and focuses on a single action that anyone can use right away, no programming required! If you have a Tip that fits into this series, and you’d like to publish it here on Website In A Weekend, send it on!

Filed Under: Creating Content Tagged With: , ,
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